Process

This first image is a double-exposure, and has been fully processed from a single, in-camera RAW file into a final TIFF after editing. I then made the reduced size JPEG you are looking at for internet purposes.

 I've included two photographs here: The smaller photo is more-or-less a straight out of camera image with minimal processing. The larger photograph is edited using, post-digital-processing and what I can only call "handwork" in Lightroom and Photoshop. The camera I use, a full-frame DSLR, allows for the production of multiple exposures on the same file, producing a RAW original.This image was a double exposure. I've done a bit of work increasing contrast, applying both minus clarity AND plus dehaze, and slight variations to a magenta, blue, and yellow color channels. I also tried split toning with color to add a color cast to the shadows and highlights. I still consider the final, processed image to be the truer expression of my internal, pre-conceived ideal. The expressive power of the image is finalized and made manifest in the 'digital darkroom', just as in days past the true vision of the analog photographer was made "real" in the analog darkroom. My photographs are not ABOUT the process, but they can't exist without it. That is why I occasionally share these details, since I normally prefer to speak only of the 'content', however one defines that slippery term. For me content refers more to intentions than objects.

Kansas, Farmland with Powerplant, November 2020

 

Wetland Abstractions, Kansas, November 2020

The top image was a single exposure of the pond, made using a polarizing filter and a 105mm lens.

 This image is an in-camera triple-exposure. The camera was held parallel to the horizon for the first image, then rotated 180 degrees for the second exposure, and so on to the third, final exposure.

Mechanical Flowervine, 2020

 This image began as a series of in-camera multiple exposure photographs. On the day I made these photographs, I utilized my camera's multiple exposure capability and made three exposures on each digital file. Additionally, the camera was rotated to a different position on a circular axis between each exposure (the lens was in the same spot, although the camera body was rotated). These four separate files, each a triple exposure, were combined on a new canvas. This new composite image was then saved, and duplicated in a horizontal reverse. This reverse was then added to the first composite. "A process so simple a monkey could do it!"

Exploding Orchidbomb (October 14, 2020)

This image is a composite created from an original single photograph of an orchid. This source image was a multiple exposure of the orchid. This original source image was multiplied into individual identical copies. These nine copies were divided into three sets of three images each; each set was a row of three images in a horizontal line. These sets were either rotated vertically, or left alone. These sets were then arranged on top of each other, with each row laid horizontally upon the row beneath it. These rows were adjusted in Photoshop in layers slightly using the move tool to position them within the compositions vertical axis. A slight amount of blending occurred to smooth out edges, mostly at print output size viewing option.
 

Kansas Landscape, October 2020

 The tree which serves as the source image of this photograph stands alone in a carefully manicured suburban housing development. Its powerful, ancient, and mysterious presence does not seem diminished by its mundane surroundings; instead it appears to magnify its weird isolation within a theatrical, scripted space. As I left the golden fields surrounding this titan, I felt a malevolent presence as though this tree, and its family, is not happy with us.

Blue Orchids, 2020